


Three Turnings of the Year

by Rubynye



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
Genre: F/F, F/M, Ficlet Collection, M/M, Nonmonogamy, One of My Favorites, Singing, Year of Troubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-14
Updated: 2010-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-06 06:30:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubynye/pseuds/Rubynye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pervinca celebrates three Yules.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Turnings of the Year

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Danae_b](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Danae_b), [Ilthit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/gifts).



> Dedicated to: This is for [](http://danachan.livejournal.com/profile)[**danachan**](http://danachan.livejournal.com/) and [](http://hyel.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://ilthit.livejournal.com/)**ilthit**, with all love.  
> A/N: The carol lyrics in the third section are modified from the lyrics of the ["Hanover Winter Song"](http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/hanover_winter_song.htm), by Richard Hovey.

Title: Three Turnings of the Year  
Fandom: LOTR  
Rating: PG-13  
Characters/Pairing: Pervinca Took (Pervinca/Sam, Everard/Pervinca, Pervinca/Marigold, Pervinca/OFC)  
Warnings/Features: Hints of het, slash, femslash, and nonmonogamy, talk of the Troubles, some angst, some joy.  
Summary: Pervinca celebrates three Yules.  
Disclaimer: Middle-Earth, hobbits, Sam, Everard, Marigold, and Pervinca all belong to Professor Tolkien's estate, not to me.

 

1\. Follow Me in Merry Measure

"And you truly didn't know?" Pervinca said, just loud enough to be heard over the music. Inside Great Smials' Banquet Hall a thousand candles blazed nearly bright as day, and the ceiling echoed with merry singing while pipers and fiddlers played with a mighty will; with the tables cleared away, a circle of laughing hobbits spun in a dance, lasses with ribbons flashing in their hair and lads in weskits with polished buttons, and on most Yules since her mid-teens Pervinca would have been spinning and laughing with them.

This Yule, however, she stood in an alcove just outside the west doors, smiling as charmingly as she might at the lad she'd drawn tipsily away from the dancing of the previous night. Then Samwise Gamgee had laughed with her, his hand broad on her back, ducking his head and blushing tastily as she kissed him; now he stood before her red-cheeked and appalled, his mouth working silently, whether with rough words he wouldn't let or sheer speechlessness she wasn't sure. "Miss Took," he sputtered at length, "I thought you what you said you were! There's Tooks everywhere!"

"This being Great Smials," Pervinca observed dryly. He blushed all the harder, close to outpacing the bright holly berries garlanded along the walls. "And you might call me Vinca, Sam. You did last night." Last night she'd caught him beneath ivy and mistletoe, and that surely had been better luck.

"Last night! Last night I didn't know!" Sam broke off to dash one broad-palmed hand across his brow, as if trying to knock the thoughts from his head. "You're quality, you're more, you're the daughter of---"

"_The_ Took and Thain. Yes, I know." A burst of laughter ended one song, began another; from the tables just within the doors Pervinca could hear clinking and chatter and a loud kiss, and more laughter. She sighed, as showily as she might, but Sam stubbornly kept his aggrieved gaze turned on her face. "Come, Sam. If I beg your pardon for the trick, won't you dance with me tonight?"

"It ain't the trick, Miss Took---"

"---Pervinca---"

"It's--- I ought to be begging your pardon! Before your kin take it out of my hide!"

"Oh, yes, just as soon as he's done dancing, Pippin will be straight along to challenge you." With a swift grab, Pervinca wrapped her fingers around Sam's sturdy wrist before he could pull away; he was surely strong enough to pull from her grasp, but she already knew he never would. "For a kiss, most likely." She thought Sam might pale at that, but he just burned redder yet, and her smile sharpened, tilting up lopsidedly. "Or has he already?"

"Miss P-- Miss Took." Sam sighed, turning his face away as he covered it with his other hand. "You have it well and truly over old Sam."

"Oh, don't take on like that." Pervinca turned his hand in her hold so she might stroke along the calluses and creases of his palm. "Please, Sam. I didn't intend to play a trick on you."

Sam let his hand fall, but stared at the wood paneling of the wall as if it were infinitely diverting. "Then why, Miss Took?"

He was just never going to call her Pervinca, was he? She very much doubted he called Merry 'Mr. Brandybuck' in bed or elsewhere, nor Frodo 'Mr. Baggins,' but mentioning what Merry murmured in his sleep would likely just make Sam's eyes go round and his feet whisk him away. Instead, squeezing his hand between both of hers, she said, "Because I knew if you knew my Da's the Thain you never would have kissed me."

Sam smote his brow again, but beneath it she could see his lips twitch. "Aye, and I would not. I've no call at all to treat a gently born miss so familiar."

"Not even if she wants you to?" Pervinca slid her foot forward, shifting herself towards him, still holding his hand.

"Not even then." Though he looked down, Sam folded his broad hand around hers. His lashes brushed the tops of his cheeks, and Pervinca longed to kiss him there, but that too might spook him; it seemed better for the moment to hold still as he slowly went on, "I wouldn't have her find herself catching a chit and a husband beneath her, losing her maids and her fine dresses to roughen her hands keeping a common little hole, just for the sake of a kiss from me."

_They did so grow them serious up in Hobbiton_, Pervinca thought, swallowing down a laugh and sliding a little closer. "Sam. Last night, did we even do anything I could've caught by?" His cheeks burned nearly hot enough to roast a joint by, as he shook his head. "Did we do anything that would make your lass cross with you?"

"My lass?" Sam's head flew up, eyes round as eggs, and if Vinca weren't holding her own look sweet and earnest she could have laughed for triumph. She knew that was a name he'd mumbled in her ear, and it hadn't been hers.

"I should hope whatever lass taught you so well has the wit to keep a hold of you," Pervinca said, just a little tartly; Sam was the sort of sweet lad who'd like the sauce. He looked down at his feet again so fast she knew she was right. "We had fun, didn't we? That's what it was, and all it need be."

"It was fun, Miss Vinca," Sam murmured, so low she almost didn't realize he'd used her friendly name. "It was grand fun, and you as lovely and as wild as a stream at snowmelt. But it's not just tween games to me. I like it to mean more."

Pervinca had answers for many things, but not for that, as a knot bound up tight in her chest. She stood near enough to Sam for her bodice-trim to whisk his chest as she breathed, and they were of a height, but he looked at her mournfully out of those warm brown eyes and squeezed her hand gently, and when he unfolded his hand she let him go.

_My cousin had best deserve him_, she thought as she watched him go off down the hall, taking his sunny candlelit hair and his sturdy shoulders, _as had that lass of his_. Folding her arms, she sighed deeply till the knot eased, straightened her shoulders, and stepped into the hall to join the dancing.  


 

2\. Winds Were Blowing, Stars Were Glowing

It was dark after Yule, dark and cold on the second night of the year, as Pervinca drew her cloak around her and walked out in the wintered gardens. A sleet-storm had passed, leaving the hummocks and needle-trees glittery in the starlight, and driving off the Men who'd been prowling along the edges of Tuckborough. Not that Vinca went out with the patrols; she was better suited to praising the lads as they came in and went out, cheering on their practices, and making sure Nell wore her cloak (and she would take her turns at the watch, her quiver as full as any of the lads', and no ear for what anyone said of it), but Pervinca kept her ears sharp, and she had eyes to see the furrows between her Da's brows. Those furrows had sunk in the day Mister Bolger's letter had arrived, with Freddy's apologetic note tucked inside it; they had but deepened the first time Lotho Pimple's Men came calling.

Pervinca pulled her cloak tight, more against memory than against the wind, even though it pulled chilly fingers through her hair and along her cheeks, whisper-singing through the bare branches. The Men came back twice, a bigger band each time, but each time the Thain and his Tooks had sent them packing empty-handed. That was doing well, from what Pervinca heard as she gave tea and dry clothes and sometimes a warm shoulder to the hobbits fleeing in from outlying villages.

Where had these Men even come from, in their swaggering insolence, in their dangerous numbers? Frozen grass crunched cold beneath her feet as Pervinca looked up at the stars, distantly glittering. Yule had been small and bereft of cheer, with barely any visitors from the Shire around, with Pippin gone, with Merry and Frodo gone, and no one speaking a word of them as if it made the spaces they'd left any smaller. In past Yules, when Pippin wasn't around to chase the same hobbits she wanted and to steal her ribbons for gifts and to share notes on who was tumbling who and how the chasers might best be caught, Pervinca could look north to Hobbiton and imagine him lying on Frodo's parlor rug waving his pipe as he talked, or eastwards to Bolger Hall where he'd be helping Freddy and Merry harass Estella, or beyond the River at Brandy Hall, dancing and kissing his way through the place.

But now where was her brother, where were her cousins, if they were anywhere still? Frodo had likely taken his servant Samwise with him, Rosie's sunny bashful lad; Pervinca had no idea how to find out, when she might hardly write Rosie to ask and Marigold's many talents didn't include letters. At least they were hopefully together, and Pervinca wished once more, uselessly as ever, that she might go see them, that hobbits might travel as they ought in their own Shire, that she weren't both needed and trapped here. Tears rolled burning down Pervinca's cheeks, and she reached to wipe them away.

But she froze halfway, hearing behind her the crackle of a footfall on dead wood.

She was crouched low behind a bedded-down hedge of roses before her sense returned to her. The Men's footfalls rang louder and thumped harder, what with the boots they wore, and what would just one be doing here in the gardens at Great Smials? Still, she stayed where she was, listening carefully, till she heard a familiar voice carping, "Splendid indeed this is, and chilly, and where in all the Shire has she got to, before I freeze my acorns off?"

"Well, that mustn't happen," Pervinca said, standing up so Everard could see her, setting her hands on her hips when he snorted and turned towards her. "I'd miss those if they went."

"Sometimes I wonder." Everard reached out for her hand. Obediently she held it out, and he took her wrist and led her from behind the hedge with only a little tugging. "Sometimes I wonder if you'd miss any of me."

The cold had made him peevish, or the hour, or the next day's watch schedule. Whatever it was bothering her husband, Pervinca said nothing as he turned her back towards the Smials, at least until she realized Everard was looking right and left to see if any other hobbits were hiding in the garden.

It wasn't wholly unfair, considering her adventuresomeness, but Pervinca _did_ keep her promises. "I walked alone, Ev." His eyes glinted as he slid them round to look at her sidelong, and she tossed her head. "Truly."

He looked at her a moment longer, then sighed. Then, unexpectedly, he let go her wrist to put his arm around her shoulders, holding her warmly close. "I believe you," he breathed into her hair, as if they'd been lovers before they were wed. "I just... you were gone long. And there's a pony missing. I almost thought..."

She hadn't actually thought of it, but now the memory pierced her, keener than the wind. Binding her breasts and running off across the Shire, free as a lad, as someone not the proper daughter of an important hobbit. Days of making new friends and seeing new things, nights sleeping in hayracks and borrowed beds, every morning empty of plans and full of possibilities...

...and she might find Pippin...

Pervinca shook her head hard. _No_, she told herself, because she had to, thinking of how Rosie had one springtime midnight. Her adventuring was summers and lifetimes ago. "I might hardly go traveling without asking my husband's leave, might I?" Everard still had his arm around her, a band of warmth across her back, and as he squeezed her she caught herself leaning into it.

"No, you mightn't," he said, a smile in his voice. And then, seriously, "I know--- no, I don't know. I don't know how I'd feel if Reg were gone and no one knew where. But you're very like your brother, and you must think of him a great deal, and, I wouldn't want you lost."

Nearly tripping over her own feet, Vinca stared at Ev. He was looking down at his toes, as his words plucked at her heart, made her ache sweetly. "No one talks of him," she gasped, dismayed to hear her voice hitch, shocked when Ev wrapped the other arm around her and drew her into a sheltered corner where the walls projected above ground. "Not even--- I---" Pervinca sobbed before she could say more, and pushed her face against Everard's shoulder before she could weep, distracting herself with the rasp of his woolen cloak against her chilled cheeks till she had herself mastered again.

While she did, Everard rubbed her back, murmuring, "shh," astoundingly kindly. "I," he began, and stopped, and started again. "I'm here to care for you," he said finally. "I'm here. And... if Pippin doesn't come back, we'll name our first child for him. A lass we'll name Pippette."

Pervinca laughed into Ev's shoulder, almost like a sob, then pushed herself away and laughed better. "That's good. That's definitely good. Let's..." She looked up at Everard, and it may just have been his being good to her, but he looked handsome in the starlight and shadows, especially when he smiled. And he was her husband. "Let's go in and see about getting that child."

Especially when he grinned, folding his hands around hers, and kissed her warmly before they went in.  


 

3\. Sing With Hearts Aglow

Pervinca stood outside Bywater Hall's main doors, listening to the laughter and music spilling forth, looking up at the warm glow in the windows as hobbits streamed all around her, going in, going out, greeting and laughing and even shedding a happy tear or two, none of them marking her as anyone more special than a tall lass in Tookish clothes. She could almost have felt lonely, till she laughed at herself, reminding herself that if she wished to be Pervinca Took, daughter of Paladin and wife of Everard, she'd be at home. Yule was doubtless magnificent at Great Smials; when she'd left her mother was in three places at once and Pearl at least four as they supervised the cleaning and the decoration and the cooking, and Nell was still the wonder and celebration of Tookland for her keen-eyed archery that had helped keep them all free.

Vinca stepped in beneath the pine swags, hung up her cloak along the wall, and walked in, breathing in the resinous warmth scented with ale and spicy baked treats, casting her eyes about to find friends in the bright crowd and spot whichever doors were hung with mistletoe. She felt plainly dressed, but she wasn't done up any less than the lasses bustling round her in what was clearly their finest. Hobbits gave her bright smiles, and she smiled back, but no one knew her, and that was just as well. If she'd wanted to be known she could be at Brandy Hall, watching Pippin, changed, tall, warrior Pippin, as he witnessed Merry's reinstallation as Uncle Saradoc's heir. She could have been there, another gentlehobbit among many, sitting primly behind her kin as a matron should.

But she wasn't. Once the Men were driven out, once hobbits might walk abroad again, once the Tooks found how well they'd fared beside their neighbors, Pervinca had to take to her heels and travel, after a year of being shut up indoors. She took a wagon-load of goods to Waymoot to help cheer their Yule, and took Ev's blessing to dance as she might as long as she returned on the New Year. Now here she stood in Bywater Hall, fetched up before the dais where the musicians tuned their instruments, three thin, bright-smiling lads, one a tween and the others perhaps a year or three into their majority. They had similar snub noses and round curls, and Pervinca wondered if they were kin as she watched them for a bit. One set a note on his recorder and the others matched it with lute and viol, and she smiled, thinking of the dancing soon to come.

Then a flash of familiar auburn hair, a darker gleam than the shiny holly-berries, turned Pervinca's head, and she saw Marigold with a hobbit who resembled Rosie done over as a darker-haired lad. Pervinca made her way through the happy jostle, and Marigold's round eyes were the sweetest sight yet of a sweet Yule, her shriek surely one of the loudest songs. Pervinca caught her waist and kissed her perhaps a moment too long for friendship, but long enough to stop her mouth, and to feel her warmth. "Hullo," she murmured, grinning as Marigold squeezed her tight, bright-faced and dimpling just as Pervinca remembered.

The lad beside Marigold coughed, drawing down his brows. Ah, yes. "Tom!" Marigold cried, "This is Miss Took, Miss---"

"Winkle," Pervinca put in smoothly, "Periwinkle Took." Marigold's pretty eyes nearly popped from her head, and Tom looked at her askance, and Pervinca felt her old self again and had to fight against a giggle. "Pleased to meet you, Mr... ?"

"Tolman Cotton the Younger," he said gravely, still looking put out, but then Pervinca still had both arms around Marigold. "Be you kin to Captain Peregrin? You have a likeness."

Marigold's gaze flicked back and forth between them; Pervinca smiled all the wider. "Thank you kindly, Mr. Tolman! I'm a second cousin on his father's side, and besides, we Tooks do resemble."

"That you do, Miss Winkle," he said, tone tilted a little darkly, and Pervinca had to bite her inner cheek against glee. "How do you come to know my Mari?"

"I've passed by Hobbiton a time or three," Pervinca replied, as Marigold bubbled over with giggles. Before she could say more Marigold cried, "The Redsmith brothers're all tuned up, come, let's have a mug and a sit?" So Vinca followed Tom and Marigold through the crowd, smiling behind his back as he tucked his arm tight round Mari's shoulders.

The little round tables along the walls were covered with plain linen and perhaps a few less dishes and bowls than they might in years past, but the crowd round them was cheery and bright as any Yule celebration could wish. Just as they made a table Marigold spotted another friend, a lass with round honey-brown curls soft around her face, no older than they but leaning on a cane. Marigold squeezed her warmly, calling her "Betony" and bidding her sit with them, kissed her Tom's cheek and asked him to "bring us back a biscuit or two, sweet?" Tom looked at Pervinca once more, hard enough to be felt, but judging Betony enough of a chaperone, he kissed Marigold in return and stepped away, and Marigold took each of their hands. "Per-Periwinkle, Tom's my handfasted, and Betony Redsmith here's sister to the lads making the music. And it's ever so good to see you both."

"It's good to be here," Pervinca agreed, squeezing Marigold's hand. Betony smiled at her other side, eyes dark and gently wistful. "And to hear such grand news."

"Good that marriages are being made," Betony said in a soft lovely voice, and when she smiled she also dimpled, though her face was a little pale, much like her brothers, and though she couldn't've been of age yet her eyes were set deep.

"So's the hope." Mari smiled, but her brow clouded. "And Rosie should have liked to see you too, but she's gone already with Sam." Her eyes were big and sad as she regarded Pervinca, as if thinking herself a second choice, so Pervinca smiled all the more charmingly. "I came by town to see my friends here, and to make new ones," she said, including Betony in her smile.

Just then they struck up the first tune, a swift-paced carol dance; Marigold sprang up, delight clear on her face, then remembered and turned to Pervinca. "I should find Tom, we've been meaning to dance, but it's so good to see you, Miss -- oh, Periwinkle." The last two words came with a head-shake and a bright grin, and then she was off, and Vinca rather doubted Tom would let her back by.

"Would you dance, too?" asked Betony. "You might if you liked, you needn't sit with me."

"I wouldn't mind staying, if you'll have me." Betony was warm and intriguing, and she smiled sweetly in response, ducking her head. "Your brothers are our musicians?"

"They are, and my sister once made music with them." Betony's gaze was far away. "They've had a cruel time of it; I'm glad they're up and playing tonight."

_And what of your sister_, Pervinca wondered, scenting a tale. _What of you, with your pale face and sad eyes?_ She shifted her stool a little closer to Betony, who sighed and looked at Pervinca as from a great distance though they sat snug together at a Yule party. "I should beg your pardon, Miss Periwinkle. I oughtn't t'be maudlin, but... I haven't been at a Yule nor a Lithe without my sister, from we were grown enough to bang a hand-drum."

"And now your sister's not here," Pervinca murmured low, knowing by Betony's depthless eyes the reason even before she replied, "Yes. We all were put in the Lockholes, and Dittany never came out."

Betony looked down at her hands, empty on the table, and Pervinca laid hers in Betony's palm to palm. "Would you tell me?" Pervinca asked, folding her hand around Betony's, and Betony looked up and saw her, and smiled with tears on her lashes. While the crowd swirled bright around them in the golden candle-light, while the ring of dancers spun inside a circle of clapping, singing hobbits, Betony murmured and Pervinca listened.

"It was such a little thing. It was Dini's birthday this September past, his coming of age; he had his lute, and Dittany her drum, that he has now, see it? And so we went singing to our neighbors as his presents. It wasn't aught anyone could keep or store, we thought it would be safe. But some Men were about, and when they took hold of Dini's lute, well, it'd been our Da's before his passing, and I think between us we all lost our sense." Betony's sweet smile twisted as nothing should ever have made it do, and Pervinca held her hand a little tighter. "So we were all taken, and left our Mam alone in the house. And would you believe at least we found Fili there, who'd gone to join the rebels?" Betony laughed, briefly and mirthlessly, and fell silent as Pippin sometimes did when telling of his year gone, and the party noise all sounded very far away.

Then she shook her head, just as Pippin did, and smiled though it wasn't in her eyes. "Dittany, she was born the summer after my first birthday, but I always felt I should look after her. She was bright and loud and brash, she had a tweener's sureness naught could harm her. You know how 'tis." Remembering Pippin's cheery goodbye before what became a whole year and more gone, Pervinca nodded. "To shorten a long tale, when they found we were Fili's sibs they beat the lads, thinking them rebels, and they beat me to make the lads talk. They didn't, they didn't." _As if any might have blamed them_, Pervinca thought. "And they beat Dittany, but Dittany, she would never be quiet. She sang like a bird cheering its cagemates; no matter which cell they put her in I could hear her voice ringing, calling others up to sing. And sometimes I could hear her weeping, she was a noisy weeper." Betony laughed, a little more brightly, and Pervinca laughed with her, older sisters together.

But then Betony sobered again. "When they put her with me I told her be quiet, be quiet, but she wouldn't. I was so afraid..." Betony rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes. "I was so afraid. But she wouldn't be quiet, she sang like a lark at sunrise, she shouted cheer to the lads we could see across the way. When they brought her back the last time she was in a very bad way; she smiled at me, but in the morning when I woke she was cold. And that was it."

Betony pressed her hand to her face as she took two heaving breaths, and Pervinca leaned over and kissed the tear-track down her cheek. "I... thank you for hearing me, Miss Winkle. I'm not sure why I told you that grim tale, on such a happy night."

Betony snuffled, so Pervinca pulled forth a handkerchief and finally found her tongue. "I'm honored you told me." She watched Betony mop her eyes, and thought, and finally just said her thought. "I should have liked to have known Dittany."

Betony smiled even as she wiped her eyes. "I think you should, too, and she should have liked to know you. She was... she was always talking, always laughing, always singing. Oh, listen, that's..." A sweet slower song, a break in the dancing. When Betony glanced up Pervinca did, to see Betony's brothers looking across the room to her. She smiled and waved to them, and the one drumming missed one beat to rub his eyes, caught the next, and missed just one more to wave back.

"Oh, lads," she murmured. "She loved this carol..." Betony hummed the low line, and Pervinca hummed descant, and Betony smiled sidelong at her, wiping her eyes again even as she drew breath to sing. "_For the wolf-wind is wailing at the doorways, And the snow drifts deep along the road..._"

As the hobbits round them sang, Pervinca joined in, still singing high. "_But, here by the fire, we defy frost and storm; Here we are warm, and we have our heart's desire._" Betony smiled wider, sang louder, and their voices twined together as all the hobbits in the hall held hands, held each other, and sang for good cheer and good fellowship, the return of the Sun and the fading of darkness into light.

"_And our hearts_," they all sang slowly, a bottomless roll of sound as Pervinca looked into Betony's bottomless fire-warm eyes, "_And our hearts leap high with the flame!_" The song ended, and a happy crash of sound, cheers and shouts from everyone around, brought in the next dancing tune.

"You sing well," Betony murmured. "I think... I think we are well met, Miss Winkle." Her hand around Pervinca's shifted a little, its hold a little warmer, a little tighter. "I... for all your listening, would you let me stand you a drink?"

"I'm glad to be here listening," Pervinca said, warmed all through, naught but meaning her smile. "And I'd surely love to share that drink with you, on one thing."

"And what would that thing be?" asked Betony, and now she was smiling back truly, with the sweetest little sly catch at the corner of her mouth, and it was lovely to see.

So Vinca leaned close, nosing her way through soft round curls, and whispering in Betony's whorled ear, told her, "Call me Pervinca."


End file.
